As the world's leading CO2 emitter, China faces significant air quality challenges, particularly from the road transportation sector. Concerns over severe air pollution have driven the adoption of pollution control measures to reconcile economic growth with climate neutrality goals. We investigate the synergistic effects of PM2.5 and CO2 emission reductions in road transportation, focusing on the impact of the "Action Plan for Air Pollution Prevention and Control" (APAPPC). The APAPPC proposed control measures targeting pollution from mobile sources and designated key cities for prioritized regulation, yet existing studies provide limited city-level evidence on how such policies influence PM2.5 reduction and synergistic emission mitigation within the road transportation sector at the prefecture-level city scale. We seek to answer how various factors contribute to emission reductions, and how the effectiveness of the APAPPC operates through specific policy mechanisms in advancing climate-neutral mobility via pollution control. Employing empirical models and emissions data from 276 prefecture-level cities in China during 2005-2018, we identify systemic decarbonization enablers across the road transportation sector and measure the impacts of policy interventions. The findings reveal that a 1-million-ton reduction in transport-related CO2 emissions is associated with an approximately 84.75-ton decline in PM2.5 emissions, indicating significant synergistic relationships, although the magnitude of this relationship varies across cities. Moreover, the APAPPC has been effective in achieving a 2.53% reduction in PM2.5 emissions, largely through increased public transportation usage, decreased road freight, and reduced vehicle numbers. Therefore, future efforts to reduce road transportation emissions should adopt differentiated strategies, with policies designed for individual cities based on their transport profiles and major emission sources.
Existing studies lack an integrated analysis of energy enterprises’ market competition, abatement cooperation, and technological signaling under different information structures. This study examines competition and cooperation between new energy enterprises and traditional energy enterprises. It develops an integrated biform game and signaling game model to analyze carbon risk management strategies for the low-carbon transition under symmetric and asymmetric information. The findings are as follows. (1) Technological progress by traditional energy enterprises reduces carbon risk but increases total carbon emissions. The profit of new energy enterprises follows an inverted-U relationship with carbon abatement investment cost. (2) A moderate increase in consumers’ price sensitivity raises energy demand. Greater product substitutability intensifies competition, expands market size, increases energy prices, and significantly raises the profits of new energy enterprises. (3) Under asymmetric information, signaling reduces the sensitivity of profits to carbon abatement costs and weakens the benefits of cost sharing. As the prior probability of the high-efficiency type increases, the separating equilibrium reduces decision-making uncertainty while simultaneously improving the profits and technological capabilities of traditional energy enterprises. Under the baseline parameters, social welfare declines under both equilibria and remains higher under the pooling equilibrium than under the separating equilibrium. These findings support differentiated carbon-abatement incentives and transparent information disclosure by policymakers, while guiding enterprises in selecting cost-sharing, signaling, technology-investment, and pricing strategies according to the prevailing information structure and market conditions.
Rewetting is the most effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural peat soils. This study aimed to improve understanding of the environmental and economic impacts of paludiculture under boreal conditions. Open ditches were blocked using peat dams and equipped with sluice valves to regulate water levels at two privately owned peat fields. Greenhouse gas emissions and grass yields were measured three years in field plots with a raised water table (WT) and a control area at both study sites. The damming was able to raise the water level only 10–30 cm compared to the control areas. This moderate increase in the WT had no effect on photosynthesis, ecosystem respiration, yields, or farming practices. Methane (CH4) emissions increased during the wettest periods in both treatments. Annual CH4 emissions (on average 0.5–60.5 kg CH4 ha− 1 a− 1) and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions (on average 0.1–9.5 kg N2O ha− 1 a− 1) remained low and were unaffected by the moderate increase in the water level. In contrast, soil respiration decreased significantly during the growing seasons, resulting in total annual soil emissions that were 30–50
A sustainable transformation of dietary structures is crucial for addressing nutritional issues and environmental protection concerns. Few studies have investigated the impact of dietary structure optimization on greenhouse gas emissions based on provincial spatiotemporal analysis. The key concept used in this paper “energy gap” is defined as the difference between actual dietary energy intake and the recommended level. In order to evaluate the trend and reduction potential of greenhouse gas emissions from food consumption in China, life cycle assessment (LCA) and the IPCC emissions factor are integrated in this study to assess greenhouse gas emissions related to food consumption in 31 provinces of China between 2005 and 2023, and predict food consumption scenarios in 2030. Three food substitution scenarios are established to fill the energy gaps in 2023 and 2030, and their respective emissions reduction potential and spatiotemporal evolution characteristics are compared and analyzed. The results indicate that the substitution scenario of animal-sourced foods leads to the greatest increase in greenhouse gas emissions, which rise from 293.05 Mt CO2eq in 2005 to 618.86 Mt CO2eq in 2030. In contrast, the substitution scenario of plant-sourced foods produces the least emissions, with an estimated value of 437.29 Mt CO2eq in 2030. The findings may provide a reference for optimizing regional dietary structures and formulating policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with food consumption.
This paper develops the concept of a Mitigation Dominance Regime to explain why global climate governance systematically prioritises mitigation over adaptation, and why this hierarchy has remained so deeply entrenched in global climate policy and institutional practice. Although the Paris Agreement formally elevated adaptation to co-equal status, adaptation attracts roughly 3-4 per cent of tracked global climate finance and remains institutionally marginal. Drawing on a structured scan of the climate policy, political economy, and governance literatures, the paper argues that this asymmetry is better understood as a form of path-dependent lock-in than as either a temporary implementation failure or a deliberately constructed exclusion. Mitigation’s three-decade head start produced standardised metrics, bankable investment channels, coherent institutions, and politically salient narratives, with these advantages now becoming mutually reinforcing. The framework specifies four co-constituted mechanisms through which the lock-in operates: metric advantage, financial legibility, institutional coherence asymmetry, and the political economy of visibility. Adaptation is not inherently illegible to this system; its context-specific and largely non-commodified character interacts with governance instruments based on carbon accounting, constraining its recognition and evaluation in practice. This distinction matters because barriers to evaluating adaptation arise from existing governance arrangements and remain open to change. The analysis focuses on international public climate governance, using corporate climate-risk disclosure as a contrasting case. The paper concludes by developing propositions for empirical research and identifying implications for reform, arguing that rebalancing requires intervention in the mechanisms that reproduce mitigation’s dominance rather than incremental increases in adaptation funding.
